It's nice to share -- even if it's a car

Reporters check out one of the vehicles in Hungary's first ever car-sharing system.

Car sharing was introduced to Hungary for the first time this week in Budapest. The new system, consisting of a small fleet of compact Opels, was presented to news media Wednesday at Budapest's Infopark.

Dubbed Avalon CareSharing, the system was presented by representatives from car-rental company Avalon and the Hungarian subsidiary of Opel. (In the interest of full disclosure, my colleagues in the Green Transport Topic Area of the Regional Environmental Center have played a part with preparatory studies, advisory help and  promotions.) In the first phase this fall, five car-share points will open, all at major business parks and available only to the tenants of these properties. After the Infopark station, a second will open at MOM Park and be exhibited to the public during the upcoming European Mobility Week (Sept 16-22).

In time, Avalon intends roll it out on a larger scale and open subscriptions to the public.

I think this will be good for cycling in Budapest, especially if it's rolled out cleverly and expanded to sufficient scale. I suppose like many cyclists, I had doubts when I first heard of car sharing several years ago. That was when a service called Autolib' was being coat-tailed onto Paris's super successful bike-sharing system, Velib'. It sounded like a brilliant idea from the cycling movement was being co-opted by the car culture, and surely that could only be bad.

But evidence from cities where car sharing is well established shows the effect can be the opposite. One of Europe's best success stories for car sharing is Bremen, Germany. From a modest start-up in the early 1990s, Bremen built a system that, as of May 2011, had 160 cars and 43 stations. Of the nearly 7,000 subscribers, 91 percent did not own their own car. And of those who didn't own a car, nearly 39 percent said they would buy one if car sharing wasn't available.

Doing the calculus, authorities in Bremen figured that every car-sharing vehicle replaces 8-10 privately owned cars, and that the system as a whole replaces some 1,500 cars. That amounted to big public savings because it allowed Bremen to avoid EUR 25 to 30 million investment in parking infrastructure.

Car sharing allows customers to drastically downsize their vehicle investment. One-car households become zero-car households and two-car households become one-car households. Even those who don't give up a car can downsize by trading in their SUVs for something better suited to everyday needs. With car-sharing, they have access to a variety of vehicles, including large-capacity trucks when they're needed.

Car-sharing people make more use of sustainable transport than those who rely on their own cars. That's because with a private car, even though  it costs a fortune to acquire, there's little financial disincentive to use it. Car-sharing allows you to forgo investment, but it has a per-trip price, so subscribers tend to use it only when they need to.

Bottom line is that a cleverly implemented car-sharing system can actually boost levels of walking, cycling and public transport ridership. In Bremen, cycling is huge, and car-sharing's part of the reason.

In Bremen (DE), nearly 60 percent of all inner-urban trips are by "sustainable" means of transport (PT=public transport).

The system in Budapest is just started, but it's developing quickly. In addition to the stations opening this fall in Budapest, the system will be exhibited in Bratislava September 18. In that city, the mayor has embraced car sharing, and hopes to launch a system within six months.

By contrast, Budapest public authorities are staying on the sidelines. The Budapest Transport Center, BKK, has expressed interest in car sharing, but it balked at opening public space for parking stations -- as cities such as Bremen have. Therefore, the first docking stations in Budapest will all be set up on private property.

Rant on ranking

When Sequoia heard Budapest was ranked the no. 13 cycling city in the world, she just laughed.

Budapest ranked no. 13 in the recently published Copenhagenize Index of best cycling cities in the world. This year the index covers an expanded list of 150 cities.
My first reaction at seeing this? You've got to be kidding! Budapest, Hungary?! Where I was nearly decapitated by a hedge after riding into a pothole the size of Kim Kardashian's butt? Where they won't allow cyclists on the main streets in the city because there's no room?? Where the name of the much anticipated public bike system is a homonym for the mildly vulgar English term for a woman's breast??

Who are the idiots who make these listings, anyway?

Then I remembered it was me. Or at least partly me. The Copenhagenize Index is a sort-of "group-source" thing relying on some 400 local yokels who do self-evaluations of their own cities. They don't compare and contrast cities, but just rate their own scene, albeit according to standardized criteria given by Copenhagenize. Each city is supposed to be evaluated by multiple volunteers, so there's some triangulation. You can look over the index questions and methodology yourself.

Although memory doesn't serve as well as it used to, I don't think I gushed about Budapest in my own evaluation. I remember being generally critical. But I may have let some local pride skew my score upward. Or maybe it was another Budapest local who exaggerated the city's virtues. 

In any case, no. 13 in the world seems like an AWFULLY high rating for Budapest. That puts us one step ahead of Paris, which back in 2005, I proposed as a good model for Budapest. Have the tables turned since then? I don't believe they have. Velib has been expanding since its launch in 2007, while Bubi is already two years past  the originally announced roll out. Meanwhile, the Paris Respire and Plage schemes, where streets are closed to motor traffic every weekend of the summer, help promote active transport and better quality of life. Budapest has had only occasional one-off street closures -- usually on European Mobility Week.

Or take London, which didn't even crack the Index's top 20. I was in London last fall, and tried out the Boris Bikes and Barclay's Cycle Superhighways -- impressive investments that had been implemented in the previous couple years. Budapest cycling investment during the same period paled by comparison.

Of course, Budapest does have its good points. They're pretty much the same now as they were in 2011, when Budapest was ranked no.11 in the Copenhagenize Index. No other city beats Budapest Critical Mass. And largely because of the local CM, there is today a large, enthusiastic population of citizen cyclists who are out braving Budapest traffic everyday despite potholes the size of Kim Kardashian's butt. As the Index explains, "Budapest is a regional leader in bicycle culture but without political will and a modern desire for mobility change, their role will be overtaken by others." Amen to that!

EU Funds Sought for Bike Sharing

The city administration has officially applied for EU subsidies for a planned bike-sharing system along the lines of Paris's Velib (which uses Hungarian-made bicycles -- pictured) and Barcelona's Bicing systems.

According to the post in Caboodle.hu, the system will include 1,009 bicycles parked at 73 automated racks and cover a seven-square-kilometre section of downtown. Users would be able to ride the public bikes free of charge for the first half hour, and then have to pay the price of a BKV ticket for the second half hour.

According to the earlier decision by the City Council, the system would at first be confined to the central districts of Pest, and gradually expand outward and across the Danube to Buda. The system would not debut before 2011.

Bike Sharing: a Boon or Bust?

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Over the last year or two, there has been a lot of hubbub about bike sharing due mainly to the massive system launched in 2007 in Paris, Velib. Now bike sharing is sweeping across Central and Eastern Europe, with systems already launched in Krakow, Bucharest, Ploieste (Romania) and Prague and plans or studies underway in Warsaw, Wroclaw and right here in Budapest.

I guess you have to be suspicious of anything that gets fashionable, as fashions fade. Bike sharing has always been a difficult proposition due to theft and vandalism, and although smart-card technology has mediated the problem, it's not a cure-all, as experience in Paris demonstrates.

In this region, as I argued in a recent article, we might be jumping into bike-sharing prematurely. In some cities, there's a basic need for safe places to ride, and if that isn't sorted out first, bike sharing could be a non-starter.

During a December visit to Bucharest, I learned that this is a concern for the Cicloteque sytem launched just last summer. With just 50 km of paths and an otherwise hostile environment for cyclists, Bucharest saw little use of the system during its first few months. Interest at the university-based service picked up somewhat when students returned to class in the fall, but it fell off drastically as soon as the weather turned cold. Cicloteque's been shuttered for winter as organisers seek a replacement for the original corporate sponsor, Unicredit Bank.

I won't say that bike sharing can never serve as a starting point, though. In Barcelona, for instance, the huge Bicing scheme launched in 2007 seems to have singlehandedly created a lively urban cycling culture where one hadn't existed.

I believe Budapest is a rare city in this region that is actually ripe for it (and any other cycling promotion measures). By now, there are scores of examples to examine around the world (see map), and Budapest will have to take care to find the most successful approaches in comparable contexts.

Krakow Launches Bike Sharing

With the rollout of BikeOne, Krakow has become the latest European city to jump on the bike-sharing bandwagon. The launch was postponed in September due to technical problems, and another date was missed in November. But the low-cost, public bike rental system finally got going before November's end with an initial fleet of 100 bikes parked at 12 stations.

BikeOne might be of interest to local cycling professionals, as Budapest City Hall is currently carrying out a feasibility study on a bike sharing scheme.

Like bike-sharing systems installed in recent years in Barcelona, Rome, Vienna, Lyon and, most famously, Paris, BikeOne is an almost-free bike rental service that users can subscribe to via Internet. They can then check in and check out bikes from special automatically locking racks positioned at strategic locations around town. In Krakow, at least according to the original intention, check outs were supposed to be manageable by SMS.

And unlike many other systems I've looked at, this one's website has a fully translated English page, making the service as accessible to tourists as it is to locals.

With fewer than 80 km of dedicated bike paths and cyclists accounting for less than 1 percent of all local passenger trips, Krakow is no cycling mecca. It's hoped that BikeOne will help change this by giving people a convenient, inexpensive way to ride bikes in the city centre. If all goes well, another 100 bikes will be added within two years' time.

Cycling Entering Mainstream

If you're quick, you can still get a copy of the current copy of HVG (http://hvg.hu/default.aspx) with a 17-page special section on Hungary's bicycling phenomenon. The section leads off with some antedotes about a couple Budapest enthusiasts who put on crazy numbers of kilometers on their bikes week-in and week out, and then mentions the Critical Mass successes (60-80,000 riders last spring, the article recalls) and the frequent weekend traffic jams of cyclists entering and leaving Margit Sziget.

The section includes an article on the domestic bicycle manufacturing market, the annual bike race around the Balaton, and -- one of my favorite topics -- the example of Paris's cycling "Velorution." The focus of this last is on Velib, the massive bike-sharing scheme of Paris. I've written lots about Paris as a good example for Budapest in terms of cycling development. Check my master's thesis (http://www.greenmedia.hu/gspencer/) or an article in Hungarian that had a more narrow focus on Paris (http://epiteszforum.hu/node/9672.

I don't think there's much information in the article that hasn't already been widely circulated through Hungary's cycling blogosphere, but the fact that the subject merited such extensive treatment in Hungary's most prestigious news weekly (HVG is often said to be Hungary's version of the Economist) is just one more sign that cycling is becoming a popular movement. Now if we can get Budapest City Hall to give it the support that it deserves.

Bucharest launches city-bike scheme

Cicloteque is the name of Europe's latest municipal city-bike scheme, launched the first part of August in Bucharest. With just 100 bikes, it's much more modest in scale than the widely publicised schemes of cities such as Paris, Barcelona and Lyon -- yet it's encouraging to see a progressive step taken in a fellow new member state of the EU.

I wrote an earlier post on the possibility of Budapest getting a similar scheme rolling. http://cyclingsolution.blogspot.com/2008/07/free-bikes-in-budapest.html

The service is marketed as a means of transport, providing an alternative to cars and public transportation. It was created by the NGO Mai Mult Verde http://www.maimultverde.ro (director Dragos Bucurenci pictured left at Cicloteque's launch event) and UniCredit Tiriac bank. The first batch of 100 bikes was installed at the campus of the University of Bucharest. To use the bikes, you have to first pay an annual registration fee of 100 Lei (EUR 30) and an hourly 2 Lei (EUR 0.50) or daily 20 Lei (EUR 5) usage fee.

Mai Mult Verde's stated purpose was to improve urban mobility in the congested capital and to protect the environment. Bucharest has 1.2 private cars, which emit an estimated 125 tonnes of lead every year.

Just as Paris's Velib is financially backed by a commercial partner (JC Decaux advertising firm) Cicloteque got its money from a commercial partner who saw the venture as a good publicity tool. The local branch of Unicredit bank put up 100% of the initial investment of EUR 150,000, which covered the purchase of 100 bikes, the cost of the launch event, as well as the installation of 20 bike racks throughout Bucharest (The racks are just for short stops -- so far, the only place you can pick up and drop off bikes is at Cicloteque's single depot on the university campus.)

Just three weeks after the system's launch, there are 200 subscribers, according to Miruna Cugler, communications manager at Mai Mult Verde. Plans for the future include more bikes and more depots around the city.

In addition, Mai Mult Verde plans to lobby for more bike paths and routes around the city. At present, Bucharest has just a few bike paths, most of which are swarming with pedestrians and other users. The poor quality and quantity of paths mean that urban bike users have to jostle with motor traffic to get anywhere, a situation familiar to cyclists in Budapest.

Free Bikes in Budapest?

I was intrigued to see that Budapest is one of many cities around the world getting on the Velib bandwagon by considering a public, free bike-rental scheme. See an English-language version of the article here: http://www.caboodle.hu/nc/news/news_archive/single_page/article/11/biciycle_ren/?cHash=e50a59e92f

According to the article, Budapest could implement a bike rental scheme in "all of downtown" for the cost of a single Combino, the name of the new Siemens-built, low-floor trams that operate on the large ring road.

I checked into it myself and found that the scheme isn't exactly imminent. Balázs Tökés, bicycle affairs director at the city's transportation department, said that right now, he's waiting for bids on a call for tenders on a feasibility study. So actually, they haven't yet even studied concrete ideas for a study.

I also contacted the main source for the above-mentioned article, Ádám Bodor, deputy of bicycle affairs in the Ministry of Traffic, Communication and Energy. Bodor emailed back that he wasn't in a position to speak for the city of Budapest, but that he is doing preparatory work on EU funding (based on Structural Funds) that would be available for the project. However, the onus is on Budapest City Hall, together with affected district governments, to prepare the project and submit it for funding.

Bodor continued: "I just can tell you my personal feelings about it: I think about 4-5 million Euro would be enough to cover the city center (inside the Kis-Körút (small ring road), V. district + Jewish quarter + Buda river bank) with a rental system similiar to those in Paris and Barcelona.
I would propose this system because the systems like Call-a-Bike in Germany are not secure enough for Hungarian conditions."

So Budapest's bike-hire scheme, at least in Bodor's conception, would be very modest in scale, covering only the inner core of Pest and not what I'd consider all of downtown, let's say at least everything inside the large ring road plus the Buda bank of the Danube. Granted, if it's going to happen, it has to start somewhere, but then again, if it's on too small a scale, with too few bicycle stations, it won't offer an attractive alternative to existing transport means, and it'll fade away. This is what happened in Brussels -- and now the city's trying again on a grander scale.

Interestingly, the territory envisioned by Bodor (between the small ring road and the Danube) is precisely the area under consideration by City Hall as a pedestrian-only zone. This would be a fantastic boon to traffic-clogged Budapest, in my opinion. But there is one problem: At last word, the zone would exclude bicycles, an omission that the Hungarian Cyclists Club http://www.kerekparosklub.org has been lobbying against.

My other comment on the idea is that I believe it may be putting the cart before the horse. If Budapest is going to promote bicycling as a means of transport, the most urgent task is to improve infrastructure. The paths and lanes now are very poor. At least two thirds are no more than lines on sidewalks, and in no place but on Andrássy út do they run on both sides of the street for both directions of traffic. And lastly, the paths don't form a cohesive network, so even if you were inclined to use them, you won't get far without running into a dead end. Before Budapest launches a free bike hire system, it should give people a place to ride them. Otherwise, it'll be handicapped from the get go.